Satinder BindraDirector,
UNEP Division of Communications
and Public Information

Growing up in India, one of my
earliest childhood memories was
watching my grandmother by the
smoky 'chulha' - the three-sided
rudimentary clay stove, that still
serves as the hearth in millions
of rural South Asian homes. Not
that I stayed there long: all the
smoke and soot the inefficient
stove produced ensured I never
spent more than the odd minute
in my grandmother's kitchen.

This picture from my past is still
today's reality across South Asia
and large tracts of the developing
world. Approximately 1.6 billion
people worldwide still lack
access to electricity and some 3
billion still use inefficient stoves
that rely on traditional biomass
fuels such as firewood, crop
residues and dung for cooking.

The stove's inefficiencies occur
at many levels. Their mud bodies
are poor insulators, and so devour
more fuel than necessary. And the
volume of air cannot be controlled:
too little produces thick smoke; too
much cools the flames. This places
a big social burden on the shoulders
of women and endangers their -
and their children's - health.
Again, I can still vividly recall my
grandmother's average day, much of
it spent fretting over her fuel supply.
She depended on cow dung that
had to be painstakingly gathered,
then mixed with hay and dried
into small pizza-shaped patties. In
a sense she was lucky: in parts of
South Asia women have to collect
firewood from distant jungles
and are regularly at risk of being
molested, hurt and injured when
they leave the safety of their homes.

Women in Nepal's hills, for
example, spend almost 2.5 hours
per day collecting fodder, grass and
firewood. Deforestation means they
have to go further afield, increasing
their burden by almost 1.1 hours
a day, giving them less time to
devote to agriculture, raising their
children or earning income.

The relentless search for fuel puts
enormous pressure on forests:
many of India's 700 million people
collect their wood from them
Deforestation in neighbouring
Pakistan is among the highest
in the world: many activists
believe it was a critical factor in
aggravating 2009's devastating
floods, which killed nearly
2,000 people, displaced almost
18 million and caused billions
of dollars in damage.

The inefficient stoves' emissions
of soot, black carbon particles, is
even more devastating. The World
Health Organization estimates
household exposure to it causes
1.6 million premature deaths per
year, predominantly in women and
children. Studies in India show
that women who have cooked on
biomass stoves for years exhibit
a higher prevalence of chronic
lung disease than those who have
not. Black carbon also causes or
compounds pneumonia, bronchitis,
cataracts, heart disease, high blood
pressure and low birth weight.

And the effect of the chulhas
goes beyond hearth and home.
As the smoke escapes outdoors
- and undergoes chemical
transformations in the presence of
sunlight - it forms Atmospheric
Brown Clouds (ABCs) of particles
and ozone gas. In Asia alone,
the particles in ABCs can lead
to an additional 500,000 deaths
annually, while the ozone causes
billions of dollars of crop damage.

Black carbon also produces
between 10 to 40 per cent of global
warming, as the particles warm
the air like tiny heat-absorbing
black sweaters. And when they
settle on snow and ice they darken
it, causing it to melt much faster.

But change is under way. Much
more efficient stoves are being
developed. A recent World Bank study in Rwanda shows that
- at a cost of just a few extra
dollars - they can cut charcoal
use from 0.51 kg to 0.33 kg per
person per day: in a year a family
could save about US$84 in fuel
costs - a substantial amount when
average annual incomes in eastern
and central African countries
are only US$300 to US$370.

In India - host to this year's
World Environment Day
celebrations - UNEP has
been involved in an exciting
project called ``Surya''(Sunlight),
which is providing a rural area
of approximately 100 square
kilometres and 50,000 people
with cleaner cookstoves. It will
document the impact on air
quality, climate, and health, using
mobile phones and advanced
NASA technology - and plans
to use this data to try to obtain
carbon credit offsets to help
spread the use of the stoves.

Last September, UNEP joined
the Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves launched by US
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.
The US Government has provided
US$50 million in seed money
for the project, which hopes to
provide 100 million clean burning
stoves to villages in Africa, Asia
and South America by 2020.

A study published in The Lancet
indicates that a ten-year program to introduce 150 million low
emission stoves in India alone
could prevent about two million
premature deaths. And UNEP
field studies show that reducing
the emissions of just one ton of
black carbon can slow global
warming as much as cutting
250 to 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
Unlike carbon dioxide, which
stays in the atmosphere for
many years, soot falls out
in just a few weeks.

Improving cookstoves must now
become public policy. Millions of
cleaner stoves have been distributed
free in India over the past 20 years
through government-led campaigns
but limited information on their
benefits has left many unused.
Institutionalizing the switch
to green chulhas must become
a national priority, through a
public awareness campaign that
highlights health safety, air quality,
climate change mitigation and
ultimately the creation of a Green
Economy and overall economic
development for rural populations
in India and around the world.

My grandmother lived to the ripe
old age of 97 and - while she
bucked the trend by not developing
any lung disease - her life around
the hearth left her with a bad back.
Now Indian women, the custodians
of the chulha, have a chance both
to improve their lives and the
state of the world as a whole.